작품 상세

Not much thought is spared on how paddy is grown and how it gets from the sawah padi right up to cooked rice on the dining table. The process is laborious, even technical. First there are repairing and firming the dykes, the tillage procedures with proper ploughing and harrowing rituals, besides proper soil aeration and keeping the right pH values. Other tasks include creating compost and clearing pests. Oftentimes, the new season is anticipated with great expectations and spirit. The transplanting period is in March and September, while in January and December, the semi-aquatic crop is deemed ripe for harvesting. There are also factors like upland and lowland, and the vagaries of weather. Still, Malaysia has to import more than a million metric tons of rice since 2020. The artist, Awang Damit Ahmad, had experienced being a farmer and a fisherman when young, growing up in his Kuala Penyu village in Sabah. His travails were captured in his first painting series, Essence Of Culture (Intipati Budaya), from 1985 to 1995. The series often touches on struggle between Mankind and Nature. With hard work, persistence, determination, courage and positivity, we overcome obstacles and challenges, making an honest living. The work on offer is truly a rare masterpiece of absolute quality. Despite being a late-starter in art, Awang Damit Ahmad relentlessly made the grade right up to his winning the Major Award (and also a Consolation Prize) in Salon Malaysia III in 1991. He had also won the Minor Award in the Bakat Muda Sezaman Malaysia and the 2nd Prize in the Malaysian Bank Association art competition in 1988, and the Gold Award in the Ecorea Jeonbuk Biennale and the Olympic Fine Art in London, both in 2012. He first had his art tutelage at the Mara Institute of Technology, later a university, at the age of 27, and taught there until May 2011 when he retired as Associate Professor, and then the Catholic University in Washington DC where he attained his Masters. His first big break was when he was chosen in the Malaysian delegation in the Contemporary Paintings of Malaysia exhibition in Pasadena, Los Angeles, in 1988. His artworks have been selected into Sotheby's auction for numerous times, and prices have been soaring high.